Sony's Flip flop: The SHOCKINGLY bad NSC-GC1 Net-Sharing Cam

[@krissjacobsen9434]

KZbinrs back then: A simple cheap Flip camera was ideal KZbinrs now: Minimum 2x 4k DSLRs, a couple of external microphones, gimbals, studio lighting, etc.

[@BeautifulAngelBlossom]

i just Use my phone

[@Slay1337pl]

You really don't need it. Any relatively strong light source and your phone will do.

[@RealGestumblindi]

Some of the most interesting content on KZbin is still produced with simple equipment and minimal editing. After all, it's the actual content that counts; if one doesn't have anything interesting to say, 4K and professional lighting etc. will not make it less boring.

[@BeautifulAngelBlossom]

@@RealGestumblindi Mine is in 720p or 1080p It edited with Windows Live Movie Maker or Youcut On my Phone all i can afford to KZbin

[@krissjacobsen9434]

A lot of my favorite youtubers (including VWestlife) is indeed using cheaper or older equipment. But I've found surprisingly many channels, event with very low subscription count, that showcase equipment that would make you think they were going to make a full fledge cinema movie. It feels like a lot of people are just buying lots of fancy equipment in hopes to become a successful youtuber, while in reality it's all about the content. Great content in 360p is worth a whole lot more than crappy content in 8k Ultra HD 120 Hz. Good and interesting content creators are really passionate about the things they create content of. And therefore the tools used to create the videos are of significantly less importance.

[@Connie_TinuityError]

I didn't expect to see a video from 2021 in 4:3 so I was a little surprised at first

[@kennethevoy]

Came here to make this comment.

[@matthewlawrenson3628]

14:35 - VWestlife drives away in his Jetta in disgust, leaving the camera behind still recording.

[@georgeyreynolds]

Before returning and running it over?

[@matthewlawrenson3628]

@@georgeyreynolds My guess was he left if there, but came back a day later "This thing is so bad nobody wants it if even if it's just lying in the street. Oh well, best see what video's on it."

[@pomonabill220]

I was waiting for him to come back at speed and run over the camera.

[@dashcamandy2242]

The video cut out once the internal battery went dead. LOL

[@NotATube]

@@pomonabill220 I wasn't the only one expecting that, then?

[@wa27]

8:17 am I crazy or is the digital zoom actually good? I can see much more detail on the sign after zooming in.

[@marsilies]

Yeah, the PVH Corp logo has more detail on it when zoomed in. I think this camcorder has crappy downscaling. Remember it takes 5MP pictures, and from what I can find, it's an actual 5MP sensor. So for the 640x480 video, it has to downscale from the 5MP sensor image to 0.3MP, or 6% of the original image size/quality. With the 4x digital zoom, it just uses the center pixels in the sensor, so 1.25MP, which downscaled to 0.3MP is still 24% the original image quality. So whatever downscaler Sony was using before encoding the video was really bad, and the 4x digital zoom image looks better because there's less pixels to downscale, so the downscaler doesn't screw it up as much.

[@RadOo]

5MP? It didn't crop in to from 640x480 video but raw sensor data, also noticed a stabilization. Sadly the sensor might not be that bad, but the video compression is.

[@home-space]

I came to the comments to say the same thing. The digital zoom actually works like a zoom should where detail increases. It is just a crap video chip or compression or something.

[@aworminmybook8234]

It's crap compression for sure. Sony sensors are excellent.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Urgh the jaggies visible on the footage of cars! That really IS an ugly scaler algorithm! How limited was the CPU in this thing?? And even after seeing the comment about more detail on the sign, I was still surprised by just how much more detail it got. You can see the shadow behind the sign, which definitely didn't show up zoomed out. At least they did the zoom on the sensor output rather than on the lower resolution scaled video...

[@germansniper5277]

No idea why this was recommended to me but I am enjoying myself

[@mikedw6748]

Welcome to one of KZbin's best channel. No bs lttstore like ads No clickbait No idiotic thumbnails No trying to game the ad revenue vwestlife is KZbin as we love it

[@kubiakWU]

How cool! There are a bunch of great videos similar to this one. I've spent hours watching them!

[@tiborbogi7457]

@@mikedw6748 Nicely summarized. Reviews a made from point of view of normal man ( no high end or similar snake oil sellers point of view).

[@41moose]

Good old Sony...giving a “premium” device for no one that asked for it.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@Monochromatik-Vision that's strange, why wouldn't they use skip protection buffering? Flash memory should've already been cheap enough for 10 seconds of video buffering if the memory sticks were 4GB and the HDD was 60. Plus Sony invented the technique for MiniDisc at first. Very strange.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@Monochromatik-Vision definitely adding the optics would've increased the cost a lot, but doing the maths, if it recorded even as high as 30Mbps (similar to the bit rate on a DVD), then to buffer ten seconds of footage would require only ~40MB of flash storage. The camera model number you quoted came out in 2009. They could definitely add 40MB of flash storage for not very much cost. A quick Google didn't give me a price per megabyte in 2009, but did in 2005, where it was quoted as 10¢ with a prediction in 2005 of it dropping to 1¢/megabyte by 2009. So even if it was actually 3¢/MB in '09, 40MB would've added only $1.20 to the production cost, and the actual NAND flash was probably even cheaper industrially, as the price I quoted was for purchasing SD cards already with a controller chip and casing. So, factoring in profits, I would wager Sony would have added $10-20 onto the price for having anti shock buffering, which I would have expected them to try given no one likes hard drives skipping mid recording.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@Monochromatik-Vision yes, I can see them engineering in a pain point to make their solid state memory stick cameras appealing in at least one way. From a business perspective, I mean. From an engineering perspective I'm still baffled as to why they wouldn't buffer the footage on all of their spinning disc recorders (I wonder if their mini DVD handycams from the first half of the '00s were buffered?). And it certainly improved their CD Walkman sales when they ported over the feature from MD. I believe some of their HDD-based Walkmans also used the technique, just like iPods with hard drives did. Of course, by that time, instead of a 10s or so buffer like MD originally had, they were able to buffer a few minutes of audio. Do you know what the actual bit rate of their high quality setting you quoted was? I suppose I could do more maths to figure out what 14 minutes per gigabyte would give. I wonder if they wouldn't have settled for only a 10s buffer in 2009, and if a minute or two would've been cost prohibitive (taking it from ~$1 extra manufacturing cost to $12, say, and further raising the retail price to a point they weren't prepared to ask for). Of course, there's plenty of just plain bone-headed decisions made by Sony in this era, so possibly there was no good reason for any of these things. Besides bad management.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@Monochromatik-Vision that does sound very useful! How difficult was it to edit the 9-hour video? Did you do it in segments, or with proxies? And I can certainly see why no buffering wasn't an issue for tripod filming. Certainly, as you say, not screwing around with transferring or swapping out memory cards is useful. I remember being interested in those WiFi SD cards when they were a thing (never got them though). So yeah. It's a little detail, but I still find it strange to not have any buffering whatsoever, even if it's not relevant for anything in a camera mount.

[@williamjones4483]

Sony has always attempted to do things differently than everyone else it usually flopped right away if no after a few years.

[@Kylefassbinderful]

That 2007 resolution looks more like 1997. I had a Sony CCD-TR818, Hi8 camcorder in 2001 and that looked a little better than this. Too bad because Sony has generally been a trusted brand for me.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

The "dancing Pixels" effect is actually visible aliasing. The Camera software seems to have a LOT of trouble scaling down the raw imagesensor picture information to the low resolution for the videorecording. That problem with Aliasing artifacts was especially bad during that time with cameras that had Image sensors with high megapixels but had to scale down the resolution for the video. My Pentax K-x had a huge problem with that as well.

[@NotATube]

"Aliasing" was *exactly* the word I was thinking of. It reminded me of the artifacts you get on "nearest neighbour" downscaling (pretty much the crudest type), so I'm not surprised to hear that the problem *was* actually caused by bad downscaling. It'd be ironic if the inclusion of the high-res sensor which took those nice photos was actually the reason the video itself (the camera's raison d'etre) was so awful- or rather, the downscaling it necessitated was.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

@@NotATube It actually is and that is also why most DSLR cameras with video recording feature had aliasing since the raw digital picture image of the sensor (coming from 8, 12 or 16 Megapixel) was downscaled in realtime by the camera's hardware and encoder to a 720p or 1080p picture. In scenes with fine details this caused a huge problem. Only solution to bypass this somehow was using a softer focus. So even if you could record video in theory with cameras that have a large sensor, the bottleneck really is the resolution scaling in realtime by the hardware & the codec. A problem that thankfully has gotten A LOT better in recent years. Mostly because large sensor video cameras became a thing in the professional video recording segment where Aliasing like that would have been absolutely unacceptable. Like for digital HD video cameras for movie productions.

[@NotATube]

@@KRAFTWERK2K6 Indeed. The photo quality on the cheap smartphone I got in 2019 isn't much improved from the one I had in 2011... but the video quality is night and day better. So, yeah.

[@dualityk]

DPOF = Digital Print Order Form. It was a way to tag images using the camera's interface, to mark which images you wanted prints of, and how many. The concept was that you could choose what to print on the camera, then hand the card to a photo lab, and the lab would read the card and print only the images you'd marked off to print. It was a supremely clunky concept with even clunkier execution, and the near-immediate availability of touch screen kiosks put a stop to it almost before it began. And of course even the kiosks only held the labs afloat for a few years, before the entire photofinishing industry cratered permanently.

[@ThriftyAV]

The whole point of the Flip was it's simplicity... Guess Sony didn't get the point!

[@pomonabill220]

They must have missed the memo!

[@MrDuncl]

I honestly wonder if they took one of their more conventional cameras, and deliberately reduced the video quality to look like other KZbin videos that were probably being recorded on JVC Videomovies. Either that or they didn't understand how to do MPEG compression. As VWestlife says the image in the viewfinder before recording isn't bad.

[@4468]

What I find fascinating is how that early 00s digital video already has it's own distinctive vintage look, I mean filming with it already makes the era look different without any additional effects; know what I mean. Like how old film formats have their own look. You totally don't notice it as you're living through that period but looking back on it, wow it feels kinda nostalgic.

[@dorontsur]

Exactly.

[@KamaradeKriska]

I know what you feel bro

[@life5161]

Bet your house is a freaking museum of cool stuff!! If you were my neighbor we'd most definitely be friends. U inspired me to start collecting records and tapes again. Sure it's useless but it brings me MAD JOY to put a record or tape on.

[@Channel95TV]

Yooo I had one of these as a kid. The videos were actually unusable haha I ended up just continuing to use the Panasonic VHS camcorder that I still use to this day.

[@Kylefassbinderful]

11:58 the pixel jumping reminds me of this Lego USB camera my brother got in his Lego Movie Making kit years ago. In situations of high light and high contrast it looked like this.

[@NotATube]

That's what I was thinking. It reminds me of something I saw on some dirt-cheap no-name toy/novelty device of the late 2000s. The footage from the Flip was surprisiungly decent for what it was meant to be- the Sony is just dreadful. I can't believe thought it was fit to go out with the Sony name on it *and* at a higher price- FFS, the footage is pretty much unusable, like some sort of bad "nearest neighbour" aliasing or downscaling. (I literally just noticed Kraftwerk2k6 below mentions this). The still photos are actually really good, but ironically- if what Kraftwerk2k6 says is correct- it's bad downscaling from the nice high-res sensor which made those possible to 640x480 resolution that might be responsible for the awful video.

[@therealbluedragon]

O6/07 were rough years for Sony. Failure of the PSP, lukewarm reception of the PS3. Back when they thought just putting their name on a product would make it sell.

[@Yeen125]

Also their movie and music division getting into endless controversy involving malware inserting DRM.

[@nynexman4464]

It's strange, the dynamic range is actually really good for a camera of the time. Heck my modern dash cam has a hard time not blowing out the sky in driving shots. It's like they scaled the image up or something making it look really crunchy.

[@5argetech56]

In 2010, I bought a Kodak Zi8. Still using it in 2021. It records video in several formats (WVGA - 720p - 720p- 60fps- 1080p) It also takes photos. It also has a flip-out usb plug for easy video transfer to PC. I have a 32gig micro sd card ( in SD card adaptor) It can record up to 4.25 Hours in 1080p. It can record up 8 Hours in WVGA.. I have used it for Facebook, Instagram, and KZbin...

[@DiestroCorleone]

3:53 So you can choose between bad quality, terrible quality, and worst quality. At least they give you options.

[@DrCassette]

One interesting thing is that this camcorder does not use the sounds and on-screen display symbols that the other Sony camcorders used at the time. So I would guess that this was not developed by Sony's camcorder department. Possibly this was a product by Sony's digital camera department, which would explain the good photo quality and the terrible video quality. Basically they took a point-and-shoot camera of that era and put it into a camcorder case. This would make sense as the point-and-shoot cameras usually already had low resolution progressive video, ideal for online sharing, while Sony's camcorders back then all recorded interlaced standard definition or interlaced high definition. Not even sure if they already had any camcorders recording to flash media in 2007, I think it was all still tape based.

[@vwestlife]

Sony had hard drive camcorders in 2007, but not flash memory yet.

[@LightTheUnicorn]

Oh wow, that's rough. I could swear I saw videos from mobile phones of the era even looking better. I did have one of the later bloggie models, and it was alright to be honest. Not great, but worked in a pinch.

[@millsyinnz]

Winter in NY looks pretty summery. Edit: oh it is summer. Goes to show though, how consumer video camera tech has advanced over the last 10-13 years.

[@nslouka90]

I live in Arizona and that’s literally what winter looks like here

[@b-macjsp3550]

6:41 Oh man... Seeing that old KZbin webpage and the player just takes me back. On DSL.. buffering.. lol

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

yeah. And 5 star rating :) And no corporate bullshit on the frontpage. And the trending section was actually showing what was indeed trending and not what was placed there.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@KRAFTWERK2K6 and video responses shown on the parent video's page! Before people started abusing that to spam unrelated crap...

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

@@kaitlyn__L Oh yes i remember that too :D Video responses in the early days were really amazing and interesting. Even discovered a few channels through that.. I also miss being able to feature videos of other people on your channel to boost the signal of people you liked and wanted to support. That and the amazing channel customisations. THAT is what i miss the most before Google turned all of us into grey mice…

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@KRAFTWERK2K6 I met my first online pals with video responses! We'd have a conversation in 20-30 second videos, before finally adding each other on MSN. But that account was already long dead by 2012, for inactivity. (All my early teenage random video projects gone with it too. Weird skits, stuff played in reverse, split screen cloning, stop motion, and much more besides - which I can never see again outside of my memories.)

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

@@kaitlyn__L Oh i too used MSM for just 2 friends and used a multi-messenger for all my different messenger protocols like ICQ, MSN and Yahoo. My old MSN account either got deactivated or automatically turned into a Skype account. x3 And i'm not using any of that anymore. Back when youtube still had the message system i was using that instead. Then exchanging emails. Some really good friends came and went during the years. I miss all of them… Oh man… so sad to hear about the loss of your old videos :( I hope you made yourself a Odysee account too. Because KZbin won't keep us little people here for much longer either.

[@DrNoxin]

DPOF = Digital Print Order Format. It basically lets you select which images you want to get ready to print.

[@bf0189]

Ugh mid 00s Sony really over engineered their products in the worst way possible. From the PS3 to this camcorder...Although I like this camcorder because of it's quirkyness! The still photos are great and look like something from a contemporary smart phone. Even the low quality over exposed video does have a nice genuine mid 2000s KZbin aesthetic! It was a terrible camcorder for the time but overtime it seems quaint and charming. Great video!

[@onometre]

lmao I remember the original PS3s with that flap covering up a ton of different card readers as if anyone needed a cf card plugged into their game console

[@JonnyInfinite]

Remember that stupid microphone shoe he reviewed? Make an accessory that doesn't fit right: genius.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

Actually the PS3 had it right from the beginning. The only problem was the insane price as well as the even more insane power consumption that would put any Server farm to shame.

[@Yeen125]

Sony as a whole had really bad management during the early 2000s. Especially during Howard Stringer’s tenure as CEO.

[@Yeen125]

@@KRAFTWERK2K6 The insane price came from Sony’s failed attempt to market the PS3 as an HD media center at launch. It’s also why the console had a Blu-Ray player despite it making the console much more expensive to manufacture.

[@fordxbgtfalcon]

Sears had these marked down to $20 back in 2011. I bought a few of them and found out within an hour of using it why it was so cheap.... I still have them....

[@siskospaceman]

At least it’s got a catchy, easy to remember name....

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

Sony: "Hey wait.. was that Sarcasm?"

[@elephystry]

Sony has a habit of that.

[@TheComputerGuy96]

Really looks like 320*240 video interpolated to 640*480, and even then it's still poor quality for something from a well-known brand. That Pretec camcorder from 2003 had better quality video.

[@pokepress]

I think it may be shooting interlaced video and trying to make it 480p. Try freeze-framing the driving footage-you’ll definitely see some issues with the lane stripes.

[@aworminmybook8234]

Another possibility is that it doesn't have enough processing power to do decent compression in real time.

[@mos6581com]

I would not be surprised if Sony intentionally crippled it as some sort of market segmentation strategy.

[@CptJistuce]

That sounds VERY Sony. They shot themselves in the foot about a dozen times in this period because of that.

[@j2simpso]

An interesting tidbit about this history is yes Sony lost this particular battle with FlipCams, but they eventually won the war by becoming the preferred supplier of optical/digital imaging components for smartphones which as you alluded to was what ultimately replaced them.

[@MrDuncl]

From the picture in the Viewfinder it seems the problem is something in the way the recording is made.

[@jesdadotcom]

This is not a thing that I thought I cared but found it very interesting. Thank you for taking the time to share.

[@gamingmusicandjokesandabit1240]

1:43 I didn't know KZbin used to look like that *surprised pikachu face*

[@gamingmusicandjokesandabit1240]

@@Nukle0n I never tried to know the quality settings on YT overtime, but I'm not surprised^ :-) ^Oh the irony of saying *surprised pikachu face* in a context where there's something not to be surprised about :-)

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@Nukle0n yeah, I remember when the 360 option came out and people were mistakenly calling the "HQ" as "HD" instead... of course, plenty of people's broadband couldn't really handle the 360 and they had to switch back to 240 anyway!

[@gamingmusicandjokesandabit1240]

@@kaitlyn__L The last 120 when the broadbands couldn't handle the new mode: Am I a joke to to you? (I fixed the spelling, only because I had done it incorrectly due to being on a bus at that time).

[@rogerlost5851]

On the digital zoom test the quality does seem to improve the more you zoom in. You can't see the shadow on the building's sign much on the 1x

[@MaxieRetro]

Pre 2008 KZbin... The good ol days...

[@dizzym9554]

Feels like Sony completely misunderstood what made the flip cameras desirable, because they seem to have gone out of their way to avoid the convenience and all-in-one feel of the flip

[@AMDRADEONRUBY]

Nice a new video from one of my favorite KZbinr VWestlife aka Kevin! Hope you are safe and you going to have a nice 2021.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

Thanks for finally making a dedicated video for this camera. Was hoping you would do one :) Yeah the Photo mode in these small Sony cams is somehow always better or at least surprisingly good. Even the MHS-CM5 Bloggie model, which looks like a spiritual successor of that NSC-GC1, takes really good pictures. Got myself one for about 30 bucks or so, back in 2018. Just for the fun. And that one at least didn't force you to use Sony's expensive proprietary MemoryStick format but just normal SDHC cards. I wonder who ever at Sony decided the Video mode on the GC1 had to look like a freaking VGA webcam on the go?

[@munjee2]

8:18 that zoom is actually great , which makes me this this is actually not a bad sensor but the processing is terrible, to make the video smaller

[@irtbmtind89]

I remember buying one of these in 2007 (at the old downtown Toronto Future Shop on Yonge Street) and returning it the next day.

[@markyastion3860]

Best channel ever

[@duskonanyavarld1786]

This and technoman

[@ModMokkaMatti]

@@duskonanyavarld1786 I prefer VWestlife to Techmoan. VW seems more down-to-earth relatable, and doesn't appear to live in a fantasy world with knock-off Muppets.

[@duskonanyavarld1786]

@@ModMokkaMatti I can understand your sentiment but I am huge fans of both of them.

[@vwestlife]

@@ModMokkaMatti To be fair, I think the Muppets have been retired for a while now.

[@CommodoreFan64]

@@vwestlife It's rare to see them these days, but I honestly miss them, as I thought they were funny.

[@dorontsur]

Funny enough, with the current retro movement - a lot of people are looking for these kind of cameras again. I've seen video camera footage used on live recordings of DJ sets (Usually they use multicam setups with GoPro's and DSLR video cameras, so they just throw this kind of camera in the mix). Also, a fashion photographer I follow on Instagram uses another 2000~ video camera to show some video footage of his shootings. I guess these two instances would still benefit from a camera that can output 720p footage and maybe digital files? and not as low resolution as 640... Nevertheless I get the appeal as someone who was a teenager in the early 2000's. It's going strong right now!

[@johnDingoFoxVelocity]

god dont remind me the GC1 was a steaming pile of horse poop they lied to consumers told them that the camera would receive a firmware update it never did it wont work in low light and was only good for outside use

[@thack3624]

Back in the day I had one of these Sony models and I tinkered around with vlc encoding and was able to upload videos and pictures onto the camera it's self and use it as a portable video player on vacations and I watched ripped moves on it lol

[@jinxterx]

It's dancing pixel video quality looks almost identical to my Cybershot DSC-V1 which came out in 2003.

[@CerdurTV]

i had that hd bloggie at 13:34 when i was doing silly youtube videos in middle school, i think that was when they actually eclipsed the Flip cameras in functionality and quality, flipping around the camera was cool, there are a few smart phones out right now that can flip the back cameras to the front which reminded me of it :)

[@thevacdude]

Nowadays, people will either use their phone, or something like a Go Pro for video. I remember the Flip video being popular back in the day. Do they still even make Flip camera's? Or have Go Pro and phones overtaken them as being useful for recording video? Thanks for the video, Kevin.

[@vwestlife]

Watch my video about Flip cameras, linked at the end of this video. They ended production in 2011.

[@thevacdude]

@@vwestlife They were decent little camera's, I'd buy one even 10 years later.

[@EricICX]

9:18 "the unintuitive and confusing controls" Are you sure this thing isn't just a modern Sony camera?

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

Some things never change ^-^

[@godofacorns]

The Flips were and remain well suited for institutional/educational use. My highscool invested in these, great intro to video for kids who wouldnt understand things like ISO or be trusted with expensive video equipment.

[@Mattfromthepast]

Good night! The first camera I bought for my mom back in 2005 that cost around $300 didn't take great videos but they looked better than this. I don't know what Sony was thinking, when Flip and my mom's old digital camera that was mainly maid for taking still photos beat you in video quality, you know you screwed up.

[@twocvbloke]

Even a VHS-C camcorder is higher quality video-wise, and they were VHS... :P

[@FranklyPeetoons]

Flip cameras are a fond memory. I liked that era's small video cameras but I didn't want to spend the money for them. One day in 2008 I was at Big Lots and an employee dropped a PILE of Flip cameras on the 90% off table. Boing. I grabbed a handful of them and took them to the checkout counter. The checkout clerk was the same guy who had just dropped all the Flips on the discount table. He was super nervous and sort of angry and kept asking me "Are you really gonna BUY all these?" I said "Yeah" and snagged a bunch for $12 each. I dunno what HIS deal was but I very much enjoyed playing with the cameras over the next couple of years.

[@neilforbes416]

As part of my kit for KZbin I have a Sony Handycam HDR-CX405. Sound quality-wise, excellent with good, well-defined stereo. Image quality-wise, again excellent with great colour quality as well. After this NSC-GC1 debacle, Sony learned their lesson and went back to the traditional cam-corder style with flip-out 16:9 widescreen monitor(viewfinder). My other camera is a Canon Legria HF-R506. Picture quality is excellent but the sound recording side falls down with poor stereo spread.

[@NALTOdeluxe]

Suzuki Kizashi. That is a name I have not heard in a VERY long time.

[@NJRoadfan]

I think my Olympus digital camera from 2001 takes better video.....that's saying a lot. It took postage stamp sized QuickTime movies. Burger King? Really? 30 Burgers is right across the street!

[@s8wc3]

At the time I had a Fuji M603, from 2003, shot pretty good quality 480p30 video on CF cards, quality up there with a decent DV cam (until you start zooming that is, I think it was only 2X optical). Shames this thing. Hell I'm pretty sure (high end) contemporary cell phones shot better video than this, and you could use relatively cheap microSD cards in them.

[@Maxxeine]

6:42 - SMPFilms! That was a trip down memory lane. I loved his videos.

[@frazzleface753]

He's still going :)

[@screenname88]

Love the design of this camera. And the “dancing pixels” is actually really awesome to me. Sucks the battery life is trash but I’ll probably buy one anyway.

[@nosville22]

So the microphone seems to hold up, photos look good, you can get an SD to memory adapter for storage, but videos suck and it'll take a long time to adjust to the controls. It almost feels like there were some internal miss communications when building this thing, and quite a few of them.

[@DavidWonn]

1:40 "[…] it was also specifically marketed towards making KZbin videos back when that was a hot new platform that everybody was uploading short, low quality videos onto […]" Nowadays there are many low quality videos out there, in content at least! But yours are always high content, thankfully.

[@LaskyLabs]

I hate so many Sony products from this time, because they insisted on using memory stick and other crap that they owned. I remember them not doing so well at this time other than in the gaming space and I think their pro space... But their consumer stuff? Nope!

[@chriskalkman3815]

I still have my flip MinoHD camcorder that I got for Christmas 2011.

[@lookoutpiano8877]

I used one of these back in the day. After watching your video, I sure feel like a sucker. That is a really poor price / performance ratio. I do remember liking the camera though at the time. I thought it looked sleek (still do). It got to a point where it would no longer power on. I still have it though! I forgot about the Memory Stick spot on the bottom. I might see if I can recover some long lost footage. Thanks for the entertaining video.

[@memesistolefromifunny9165]

Find anything?

[@jacnel]

Honestly this camera seems exactly what Sony would make when trying to duplicate a Flip camera. Complete with a clunky interface and lots of proprietary peripherals. I have fond memories of those Flip cameras, we used them in grades 7 and 8 for various school projects.

[@jmwintenn]

in 2007 i bought a sony cybershot for $200 at best buy. super bright outside or inside it had that same rainbow grain effect. still photo or video.

[@yanks1fan09]

I have the last series Flip camera which was High Def because it came with an HDMI cable and a contraption to actually play it on the TV.. I will have to look for it. Haven't used it in ages along with all the many camcorders I bought over the years.

[@BilisNegra]

The menu and controls suggest this was merely a low range Sony point and shot still camera from that era fitted into a different form factor and mounting fixed focus lens. No wonder it can do decent stills for the time but quite subpar video.

[@northernplacecorporation]

FUN FACT: September 2007 was also the time Sony introduced us to Sony Vegas Pro 8.0, released on September 10, 2007.

[@dashcamandy2242]

I like the Kizashi too. I actually considered buying one until I thought about how rare they were (which typically leads to parts being hard to find). One thing everyone forgets about Suzuki is they made their cars almost as fun to drive as their bikes. Don't believe me? Track down an early-90s Suzuki Swift GTi 5-speed and take it for a spin. I once owned a '94 Geo Tracker (rebadged Suzuki Sidekick) that was a blast to drive too, it wasn't super-fast, but it would literally go anywhere. One time I drove down a rutted dirt bike trail and ended up surprising some two-wheeled Suzukis with my appearance. Heck, I didn't even use 4WD to get there, either. I'd get another one in a heartbeat, definitely one of my Top 3 Most Reliable Vehicles.

[@neoqueto]

I was lucky to own a Nokia N95 back then and from what it seems it pretty much left both cams in the dust in terms of video quality. It was still VGA, MPEG-4 30 FPS, and macro focus in video was done by hitting it gently with an open palm, but the 5MP sensor was nothing to sneeze at even compared to point and shoots of the day. So even back then it was somewhat more worth it to own a swiss army knife of personal media devices, which is exactly what smartphones are today, rather than each device individually, think mobile phone, low end video cam, point and shoot, music player and even a satnav system. Of course no smartphone can ever replace a DSLR.

[@Pasi123]

My first "camcorder" was a Nokia N93 which I bought used in 2010 or 2011. It did take decent 480p30 MP4 videos but it didn't have auto focus when recording video and the bitrate was quite low. N93, N93i and N95 were some of the best smartphones for video recording (and stills) back in 2007. Most cheaper smartphones only had 240p-360p 15fps video recording and most feature phones were only able to do 144p 15fps

[@ZacabebOTG]

No pixel binning, and improper debayering as a consequence gives that absolute orgy of moiré and aliasing. They could have stuck a 0.3 megapixel sensor with binning in there instead and gotten far better video quality.

[@mikewolf78]

The video quality actually improved after zooming in. I think that the camcorder is cropping a part of the sensor in order to achieve magnification.

[@IAmNotAFunguy]

Was this camera prone to the "purple haze" that some of Sony's Cybershot cameras at the time were known for. I got a used Cybershot that has the "purple haze" issue.

[@davek12]

"Worst software I've ever used," I believe that I used that term for one of the NetMD programs that made the copying from PC work. My otherwise rock solid Windows 2000 PC always required a reboot after using that just as a precaution.

[@airingcupboard]

I quite like the dancing pixel effect, although not as the default and definitely not in the highest quality.

[@pokepress]

Seems like some sort of chroma artifact. There’s color fringing on a lot of stuff.

[@RussWWFC]

A couple of surprises - firstly the Flip being THAT long ago and being reasonably decent, even today. Secondly, Sony sticking their name on such a shoddy product, if I'd have got it, I'd have sent it back as a suspected Chinese fake, cameras from 7 years prior (my Kodak) with better pictures than that.

[@cjmarsh504]

The Sony look like it was too late when it came out.

[@ScarletAmethyst]

Although the Flip camera doesn't have rechargeable batteries unlike some other cameras, Ni-Mh batteries can be used to give the flip camera rechargeable batteries although they're more expensive than alkaline batteries. An interesting note about cameras using AA or AAA batteries instead of rechargeable batteries is they require Ni-Mh batteries to get the best performance. Using alkaline, lithium, and especially carbon zinc batteries on these cameras will cause the battery to run down faster when taking photos.

[@Butterscott_NJ]

I had two Bloggies. The Touch and the Sport. Somehow, the Sport was worse than the Touch despite releasing years later. I filmed a lot of really bad KZbin videos on another channel with both. The meh quality of those cameras definitely didn't help.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

That camera is basically quint-essential for Sony. Great concepts but absolutely NO clue how to sell it properly. In this case the basic idea of a small Solid State camcorder that could fit into your pockets, was really great. It just was a technical disaster and disgrace compared to their MiniDV and HDV camcorder line up. It's almost as if they had forbidden that R&D section, who worked on this thing, to make it better than their regular camcorders. And THAT was a mistake. The Bloggie camera line up showed how it could be done right. Even if if they had no manual settings and were basically point & shoot.

[@dhpbear2]

KZbin didn't smooth out the video. At 11:10, the car's logo is PIXELATED!

[@W0RLDSSMALLESTVI0LIN]

I remember when almost every video on KZbin was filmed with those Flips. I hated them back then, but like them now cuz, ya know, nostalgia.

[@cee_tee]

DPOF, that's that weird photo printing standard which never took off. Let's you mark images you want to print, then when you plug them into a compatible device, it immediately starts to print or at least queues them. Funny enough, the DPOF button is right next to a Print option. It goes right with what you were saying about how unintuitive the menu was.

[@JonnyInfinite]

Ahh old KZbin...those were the days

[@DerOllie]

Good to see how things have developed. Good video

[@TheRailroad99]

So you could say this Flip camera was a FlipFlop...

[@solojinglesradio1]

sony had very good handycam models but did not see this. Around 2007 they still were using hi 8 tapes

[@briangoldberg4439]

I would be interested to see more side-by-sides of the sony and the flip video footage.

[@vwestlife]

I did exactly that (briefly) in the video.

[@fizyx]

I suspect in video mode, it is only reading 320x240 pixels from the sensor using point sampling, and you are seeing some bad upscaling artefacts to 640x480 on top of that.

[@paulkane2391]

For as good as a segment leader can be, you also have to remember Microsoft Bob. Everyone boots it now and then.

[@dextrodemon]

kinda love the silly litttle guy, twilight and twilight-portrait, and no other portrait modes..DCFO (or w.e) and a caption that just says DCFO again, even tho there's room write out at least some of the words. and the gross aliasing issues, which are apparently long enough ago now for me that i kinda dig it, like the crackle on a vinyl record. he's trying.

[@velvetpilot2008]

And VIDEO REPLIES! I forgot about those! Why did they take that away? I loved you could see a string of video replies back in the day. Seeing old KZbin from 2006 and 2007 brings me back. I got my first account from June 06 banned for copyright infringing lol.

[@nerdyride]

The Sony camera has a great look to it. Thank you for sharing this with us.

[@venturarodriguezvallejo9777]

Very good video..., exposing the "fall to hell" SONY non-professionnal gear experimented since late 90's.

[@ericMT]

Sony has made a lot of “flops” but also a lot of innovative devices that have changed the entire consumer electronics landscape. For every CDP-101 or Walkman type device they create they also make something like the Sony Mavica MVC-FD75 digital camera with a built in 3.5” floppy drive for storage.

[@eDoc2020]

I have an MVC-FD73 and I really think it's a great idea for the time. It makes saving pictures easy when AFAIK with most other cameras you'd need to transfer using a serial cable and special hardware. Plus you could get 3.5" floppies everywhere for easy expansion.

[@johnDingoFoxVelocity]

and you wanna talk retro camera's funny as hell the memory stick pro duo hybrid mini dvd cameras recorded in 720p and no one wanted them after the GC1 Snafu

[@Vokabre]

"Not-sharing cam"

[@AbandonedMaine]

Recently found one of those Sony Bloggies for $20 at the surplus Mardens chain up here in Maine just like the white one pictured being held. Used it once and never again. My low end Android phone is much better.

[@wilkes85]

My DXG had about that much built in memory, Sony has no excuse for that. You can't even say "ah it was 2007, all cameras were potatoes" because there were some really good digital cameras out by then. There were better options for the same price at the time. As for the control layout, I can only imagine what a pain that thing would be to use left-handed haha.... Also, all devices should have a replaceable battery, it's incredibly annoying when they don't because if the device is really good (such as my Sony NWZ-B183F MP3 player), you just know it's on borrowed time before it won't take a charge anymore.

[@MrBillmcminn]

It looks like Sony used a CCD chip from a security camera in this camcorder. That being said, it does have separate full automatic and program settings. On cameras and camcorders I have used the program setting gives better quality pictures and videos than the automatic setting. Program only automatically controls the shutter and aperture. Full automatic controls other settings such as the data compression on the finished output.

[@holyravioli5795]

I'd actually appreciate all the new controls but holy crap is the footage terrible, i would never consider footage from this usable in any way for any purpose other than mocking it. Even for early KZbin this would be bad.

[@TonyW79SFV]

The Sony Digital8 tape-based camcorder (looks like a DCR-TRV260 or 460) you used to record this video is older than the flash-based Net-Sharing Cam but has a much higher quality video. Of course, the average consumer cares about convenience over quality, they'd rather use a simple-to-use camera than a complex higher quality camera.

[@AaaAaa-ly3on]

Both cameras are worthless today, but I would take one Sony over dozen of Flips! -Cause only it's beautiful pouch, PSU and cables worth the effort of getting one nowdays! ;)